The recently launched Steam Greenlight program has a problem with its signal-to-noise ratio, as Valve has been flooded with legitimate submissions as well as joke entries from the collection of comedian known as the internet. To combat this, they announce they are adding a one hundred dollar submission fee, which will be contributed to charity. Here's word:

Two things we’ve noticed so far. First, there are a ton of legitimate submissions that people want to see. Second, there is unfortunately a significant amount of noise and clutter being submitted, either as a joke or by fans not fully understanding the purpose of Greenlight.

So, with those things in mind, today we’ve made two updates to how Greenlight works.

The first update is a $100 fee for someone to post to Steam Greenlight. The proceeds will be donated to Child’s Play. We have no interest in making money from this, but we do need to cut down the noise in the system. (Note: Anyone who has already posted a submission to Greenlight will not have to retroactively pay for any existing submissions, but will need to do so for any future submissions.)

The second part of this update is to improve your window into Greenlight and help you find “your kind” of games. The next time you visit Steam Greenlight you’ll be shown a smaller, manageable list of games that you haven’t rated. This view is a mix of popular games and new games to Greenlight.

In the end, we’re very interested in maintaining an environment that is fair and beneficial to everyone involved, and one that fun and rewarding to join.

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Silicon Avatar wrote on Sep 5, 2012, 12:42:It's a dumb barrier. Instead of Valve hiring a handful of people dedicated to keeping Greenlight clear, the put the expense on the indie developers.

Valve makes money of those sales too. Let them pay the price. They're the ones wanting more product to sell.

A bunch of employees who cost money and have to be managed versus a virtual $100 barrier that effectively does the same thing. I don't know, it doesn't seem dumb to me. They aren't scrapping their traditional approval process anyway, publishers and indies can still go through them directly. Greenlight strikes me more as an awareness tool and I can't say I'll be using it much so /shrug.